My book club argued for 45 minutes about whether the narrator was reliable.

Last night my group in Austin got into it. Sarah read a passage out loud and said it proved the guy was lying the whole time. Mike swore it was just bad writing, not intentional. I sat there listening and realized both of them had good points. Hit me that I never even questioned the narrator. I just took his word for it. Has anyone else had a book totally flip on you after someone pointed out a detail you missed?

2 comments

2 Comments

phoenixb341mo ago

My group got into it over Gone Girl back in 2015. I was defending Amy like she was my best friend until Dave read the diary entries out loud and I realized I missed every single red flag. The whole thing flipped for me and I couldn't believe I was so blind. What worked was going back and rereading just the first chapter with what I knew now. I marked every line that felt off or fake and before long I had a whole page of notes. The book became a different story altogether once I started looking for the lies.

the_spencer1mo ago

Man, you ever read a book and just sort of coast through it without really paying attention to what the author is doing? That was me with The Girl on the Train for the longest time. I read it, thought it was a solid thriller, and moved on. Then a buddy pointed out how the main character kept rewriting the same events in her head and never once had a clean memory of anything. I remember arguing with him that it was just a narrative style, not her being unreliable. But then I went back and reread the first chapter with that idea in mind. It was like I was reading a totally different book. The whole thing made me realize I was gullible as a reader. I used to think unreliable narrators were just a cheap trick authors use to be clever, but now I see them as a way to make you work for the truth.